Joe's Ancient Orange Mead

Weird. My JQGM was done in almost half the time that this has been going.

Joe's Quick is one of the best recipes I've made, mine is perfectly clear & delicious after only a couple months. It's a little sweet to my tastes, but that's part of what makes it drinkable so early.

My Ancient Orange is going on 7 months I believe & it still needs a little time to mellow out. It should be good next year.

I just started a batch of this substituting the oranges with peaches and using a champaign yeast, and yeast nutrient instead of raisins. Its in a 1 Gal glass jug with a bung and air lock (some people use condoms...I call those people prisoners jk. Besides an airlock is CHEAPER than a three pack of condoms)

Brewed this up the same time we made some some cider. The cider started fermenting right away and it left me worried because my mead wasn't bubbling. After an hour or two it was bubbling about once ever 30 seconds.

The next day the mead was bubbling like mad - 2 to 3 bubbles every second. The smell is a bit unusual for a first time brewer but it doesn't smell too bad.

I do have one question. I have read that you need to agitate the fruit that is floating on the surface or it will begin to mold. Has anyone had experience with this? I dont want to if I dont have to because its a pain sterilizing and then the chance of contamination etc...

Thanks in advance.

I haven't had a problem with mold in my batches, and with JAOM, I just let the stuff sit in the carboy until it's time to bottle, other than taking gravity readings.

Just bottled my 3 gallon batch. Filled 8 wine bottles and 12 beer bottles. Popped one open to test and its quite potent, with a pithy orange peel taste. I am looking forward to letting it age and mellow.

Someone asked how this comes out when you use orange blossom honey, and the answer is "nicely" . By FAR my favorite honey that I have made this with was buckwheat though, no lie. I've had people refer to it as my "chocolate orange mead" or "chocolate honey wine". Dont be afraid of the buckwheat .

Personally I just adore this recipe because it didnt require me to make a single trip to the LHBS in order to brew mead. I wanted to have some available while we all watched Game of Thrones. Currently all of the bubbling, foaming and frothing jugs on my bar in my apartment are breadyeasters, and I am looking forward to seeing them all clarify etc. and see which ones I like more and which I like less. For the record, lavendar tastes kinda funny in here (note that I cant wait more than 4 or 5 months to start drinking, so maybe if it had lingered....)

Got a 3 gallon batch of this going today after come into posession of 10lbs of home..

underground and under the influence

Oh wait..i doubled the yeast since i doubled everything else... Is that bad?!?!

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Ive quadrupled the yeast because Im an idiot. The mead was still nice . Im drinking some now in fact...

The only problem I can think of with doubling or adding too much yeast is the off flavor, depends on the brand and such. No real worries.

Hey!

I just finished my first batch! Pictures are on their way. I have an interesting question. My JAO came out pretty well by using the recommended recipe. While on the other hand my pear substitute came out very cloudy. Is this due to something unique to pears? Or did I just manage to screw something up?

Also, on another note. Has anyone tried anything related to JAO and blackberries? I would imagine this would be something absolutely wonderful.

Wanted to share an update on this. It's been about a month and a half since I started my half gallon batch in a beer growler. I just held it up to the light (since its brown and hard to see thru), and noticed everything had dropped out. I poured it directly from the growler (no hoses or anything), and DAMN it cleared up well.



Tastes still very strong in alcohol. I'm going to let it go in the growler till early november, cold crash, siphon out everything, and bottle and let sit till late dec. Hopefully it'll be mighty tasty then!

Thanks!

hippo8046 said:

the other hand my pear substitute came out very cloudy. Is this due to something unique to pears? Or did I just manage to screw something up?

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Possibly something to do with pectin...did you use any?

At 5 months mine was still hot so I bottled it up and will sample next May.

Yeah, I was reading about it earlier. The pectin in the pears clouds up the final product. Thanks for the help!

Just pinging this. I threw all of the items in a 3 gallon carboy, trippling the volume of everything except for the yeast. Should I have tripled the yeast also?

Nope, no need to triple the yeast. 5g or one packet is good enough for 5 gallons. If you triple the yeast it will make tit ferment faster, but we are talking almost minutes or seconds off the final time of about 2ish weeks.

Good luck! Keep us posted with your progress!

hippo8046 said:

Nope, no need to triple the yeast. 5g or one packet is good enough for 5 gallons. If you triple the yeast it will make tit ferment faster, but we are talking almost minutes or seconds off the final time of about 2ish weeks.

Good luck! Keep us posted with your progress!

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Good to hear! I thought I had seen something about not needing to triple they yeast, seems to be getting pretty good action out of the airlock already. I'll definitely keep everyone posted.

Thanks!

Awesome! Did you just use the original recipe? Or did you modify it to make it your own?

hippo8046 said:

Awesome! Did you just use the original recipe? Or did you modify it to make it your own?

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I used the original recipe, pretty close to verbatim. It's my first go, so I wasn't really sure what to tweak or change... so I figured I would let the recipe do the talking. I did add 5 cloves for a 1.6 clove/1 gallon ratio and used 9 lbs of clover honey with 1lb of orange blossom honey.

Getting ready to try my hand at making mead. Can the Ancient Orange Mead recipe be modified by using any other fruit?

wander65 said:

Getting ready to try my hand at making mead. Can the Ancient Orange Mead recipe be modified by using any other fruit?

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I'm pretty sure that others have used other fruit- for some reason, blueberries stick in my mind- but I have not.

Thanks! I have an abundance of blackberries and cherries but I could just as easily seek out some citrus as well.

wander65 said:

Thanks! I have an abundance of blackberries and cherries but I could just as easily seek out some citrus as well.

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The orange is nice, even though I'm not an orange beverage fan. But blackberries sound awesome!

I opened a bottle of an awesome blackberry mead from Honeywood winery in Oregon last night. Very mellow on the sweetness and really just a hint of blackberry. Worth a try I think.

http://honeywoodwinery.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=101

I used blueberries and vanilla in this recipe instead of the oranges and spices and it turned out fantastic.

Whats the minimum age time on thid bad larry?

underground and under the influence

DeadNutsBrewing said:

I used blueberries and vanilla in this recipe instead of the oranges and spices and it turned out fantastic.

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What's your recipie?

Basically everything is the same except I omitted the oranges and spices and added a lb of frozen blueberries that I thawed out and a tsp of vanilla extract. This was actually just a half gallon batch I did just as an experiment and my wife loves it.

@ yooper, I am trying my hand a mead today, Is the honey just used for the sugars or does really have a slight honey flavor? I have tasted a mead before and I didn't get any honey flavors. It was like stale alcoholic water.

RandomBeerGuy said:

@ yooper, I am trying my hand a mead today, Is the honey just used for the sugars or does really have a slight honey flavor? I have tasted a mead before and I didn't get any honey flavors. It was like stale alcoholic water.

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The honey you use should definitely affect the flavor. Not sure what meads you had before(homebrew or commercial), but that sounds very very wrong to me.

That said, if you load the mead up with herbs, or other flavorings, I could see how you could over power the honey flavors too. Plus a really dry mead would not have nearly as much honey flavor as a sweet mead.

After a month of fermentation or so.. How long (minimum) should this age for?

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2brew1cup said:

After a month of fermentation or so.. How long (minimum) should this age for?

underground and under the influence

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Age it til it's drinkable....which seems to be the general rule of thumb for most meads.

The last batch of this I made was aged 3 months in the carboy, bottled, and then aged another 3 months before it was drinkable, though it was another 6 months later(1 year total) until it was really tasty.. However I also use wine yeast for this, I believe the point of the bread yeast is that it will not get the ABV as high, and sweeter meads tend to not need to age as much.

My suggestion would be to let it age, pull samples, and bottle when you like the samples(assuming it's cleared by then anyway).

2brew1cup said:

After a month of fermentation or so.. How long (minimum) should this age for?

underground and under the influence

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I aged mine two months in the carboy and a month in the bottle before I drank any. It was alright then. But the longer the better. If I'd have let the bottles sit for another month I beleive it would have been primo but I just couln't stop drinking the stuff. I followed the recipe exactly.

Mine has been in bottles almost 7 months now

Ok I brewed this recipe on sunday. I have to say its super easy process, I added fresh squeezed peach juice and it rocks. I got active fermemtation within a couple hours of pitching. Its awesome! Since its my first mead once its done fermenting I'll drink it. Then make a new batch in January and then I'll let it sit for a year.

What I really need is a tea-totaller friend with a basement. Id hide my bottles there for aging where they are out of reach. At this point I have been making and drinking at a good clip.

I have made 6 batches of this mead over the past 4 years. Last night I found a gallon jug pushed to the back of a shelf in my basement which started on 10-14-09 and racked into the jug on 12-25-09. It is by far the best tasting. Definitely worth the wait, even if the wait was accidental!

I just polished off my last 8oz bottle of this stuff last night. I will definitely put forth that this stuff only gets better with age. I had written it off as of a few months ago as far too harsh and way too astringent. HOWEVER, I had only three bottles left and I certainly am kicking myself as of now over that fact. That extra few months in the bottle certainly rounded off the rough edges and then some. I kept it still as I find it's better to sip stuff like this slowly and enjoy the tastes and aromas. Speaking of which, the smell from this stuff really was nothing short of amazing. Flowers, citrus fruits, spices, and of course honey... all mingling together and clearly perceptible from a foot or two away from the glass. It was great out of a brandy glass so you can get your nose in there and smell it as your taking a sip. The taste was pretty intense too.... honey and oranges, cloves and vanilla ... and a really nice flavor I can only imagine coming from the yeast, ( which is odd, but welcome),. I wouldn't even pair it with anything.., it stands on its own.

The only thing I have to say towards the bad is: i really can't imagine that this is different than any other mean in so far as that it really needs a proper amount of time to age. I would hate for people to think that this is something that is truly drinkable in 3-4 months time, go through the trouble and expense of making it, only to be let down by how harsh and phenolic it is at that young of an age. I'd say this really needs AT LEAST 8 months to a year to come into it's own.


Other than that, GO MAKE SOME!

I have a couple bottles that are 7 months old and it gets better and better every month. I also entered a bottle in a competition so we will see how it does.